Tuesday, 12 April 2016

The Panama Papers

I'm
just back from my annual pilgrimage to Norfolk.
Living in our stunningly beautiful yet land-locked county, I get the
urge to every so often go and see the sea.
I feel it rebalances me, or something.

I
find watching the waves mildly hypnotic, and enjoy a stomp along the beach
finding pretty stones, and then also the not-so-pretty items like crab's legs
and fish heads, hopefully just jettisoned by a passing gull rather than the
remnants of some seaside sacrifice.
There also sadly lurks the inevitable plastic detritus which is the
scourge of our modern age.

Where
we stay has no mobile signal so it gives me a chance to completely digitally
detox too, so I had no idea what was going on with social media and barely
watched any television.

Therefore
The Panama Papers - which sounds to me like a book Graham Greene should have
written - almost completely, gloriously, passed me by.

But
for the fact that I visited a nearby hostelry and was enjoying a small
alcoholic beverage, I might not have known about the latest political
shenanigans until I returned home.

BBC
News was on in the background with sound muted but complete with subtitles, so
my attention turned as it so often does when there's a TV on - it's almost
instinctual now isn't it? Where there's
a screen there's a human gaze, fixed, staring at its contents.

I
discovered the Prime Minister of Iceland had resigned, except now they're
saying that he hasn't actually resigned, merely stepped aside - what is this, a
bizarre political country dance?

And
there was David Cameron, looking earnest, saying something about he didn't have
shares, then he did have shares, but then he sold the shares. In truth it was as hard to keep up with the
subtitles as it was with the speed with which his story kept changing.

As
pointed out by some it's all a bit reminiscent of Father Ted and 'the money was
just resting in my account'. Except this
isn't a comedy, this is all too real.